Hardly anyone had given the Utopia Project much chance, which Raj now guessed might have been the key to its success. The project’s sponsors had money, ideals and the realistic view that radical change wasn’t about to happen on Earth any time soon. But their solution was so audacious, so expensive, that it seemed to verge on the impossible. Until it happened.
“Look,” Marian said, her finger mashed against the port. “I think I can see one of the habitats!” Raj squinted and imagined that he, too, could make out the construct in the shadow of the planet. The feeling of loss transitioned into the same euphoria Raj experienced when he’d learned that he’d been given a berth on the first transport to the colonies. Almost everyone on the Ghandi was technical — scientists or engineers. There were only spots for four political activists, each acting as the administrator for a habitat, and Raj had been chosen for one of them. The opportunity to trade everything he’d ever known for a chance at freedom.
For the first time since he was woken from the induced coma he’d been in for the two years of the trip, his head stopped hurting. Marian grabbed his arm.
“This is so exciting,” she said. “I can’t believe we’re almost home.”
Chapter Two
Laser fire, tear gas and old-fashioned lead bullets tore the air around Isabel Hernández. It wasn’t the first time she had been in a firefight, not even the first time she’d been on the losing side. But it was the first time she knew that if she didn’t get out of there right now, she wasn’t going to get out at all.
She ran toward the makeshift bunker she and her colleagues had built weeks ago, before the militia’s armoured vehicles and assault drones had rolled in, surrounding them. Her steps didn’t even falter when she saw Austin fall face down in the mud, a spray of red where the back of his head used to be.
She burst through the door and made straight for the bunk she’d shared more often than not with her now-dead ally. She grabbed her ditch-bag, felt around under the cot for Austin’s and tied them together with one hand while she fumbled for her guns with the other. She slung the bags on her back and took the first sack she could find, someone’s laundry bag. She dumped the contents on the floor and started filling the bag with anything that looked valuable. Andrea’s engagement ring, Sarge’s fancy comm unit, all the weapons she could find.
When the bag was still light enough for her to carry, she punched a hole in the wall, creating an opening to the bunker’s escape tunnel. When the militia overran the rest of them, they’d find the tunnel and come after her. She hoped her teammates would put up a better show of defence than she had.
Isabel didn’t look back at the place where she’d lived for nearly a month, full of the tangible memories of people who’d called her a confederate for the better part of a year. She ran down the tunnels with a single-minded purpose — to get out alive.
She never looked back.